A Man Who Hated Black Men Found a Victim Who Cared for Others

Since he was a boy he has hated black men. A bitter hatred of black men that boiled in his mind and consumed him. Then last week, apparently, he decided to kill them.

This was the mind-set investigators say they gathered of James Harris Jackson, a morose and seemingly directionless 28-year-old white man who lived in Baltimore and had been having trouble getting rooted since leaving the Army. He had registered few obvious traces of who he was and what he stood for. Those who intersected with him found him to be a disagreeable and solitary figure who waved away contact with others.

By all accounts, Timothy Caughman, 66, was a benevolent man content with an unassuming life. He lived in a former single room occupancy residence that had been his longtime home. The son of a home health care aide and a pastor, he had worked in antipoverty programs in Queens. Religion and philosophy were constants in his conversations over unhurried meals of turkey bacon and grits at local diners. In recent years, he had caught the familiar New York infatuation with celebrities and delighted in collecting their autographs and pictures.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Mr. Jackson boarded a bus in Washington and rode it to New York. There were black men everywhere, and he told investigators he contemplated going elsewhere, but settled on New York because of the flood of media there. His goal was to draw the widest possible attention to his murderous plan.

He made his statement of what hate looks like late on Monday night when the authorities said he pulled out a sword and fatally stabbed Mr. Caughman. He had been scavenging for cans in Midtown Manhattan around the corner from his home.

Presumably, Mr. Jackson had little intention of getting away with it. Just after midnight on Wednesday, he surrendered to the police and took responsibility for the murder. He was arraigned on Thursday in Supreme Court in Manhattan and charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime. He was ordered held without bail.

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Timothy Caughman

The attack comes at a particularly anxious moment in America as hate crimes are on the rise in the country and especially in New York City. Both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo forcefully condemned the killing.

At the arraignment, Joan Illuzzi, the prosecutor, said that Mr. Jackson was particularly offended by black men who were with white women. She told the judge that additional charges may be filed, including murder in the first degree, “as this is an act, most likely, of terrorism.”

Dressed in a Tyvek suit, handcuffed and his legs in shackles, Mr. Jackson sneered several times as the charges were read. At one point, he gazed at the ceiling as though bored. He did not enter a plea.

Sam Talkin, Mr. Jackson’s defense lawyer, declined to comment on the specifics of the case. “We just need for the dust to settle,” he said. If the information put forth by the authorities is accurate, he added, they will have to deal with Mr. Jackson’s “obvious psychological issues.”

The investigation into Mr. Jackson is still in its early stages and much remains unknown. But pieces of his life — and of the man he is accused of killing — were beginning to come together.

Thus far, investigators have not linked Mr. Jackson to any white supremacy or hate group. Their sense is that he’s a discontent, not unlike many others who carry out senseless killings.

But he was blunt about his prejudices when questioned by detectives. According to a law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity since the investigation is continuing, “He told the cops, ‘I’ve hated black men since I was a kid. I’ve had these feelings since I was a young person. I hate black men.’”

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Mr. Caughman, right, with his uncle, Casper Peek, and with his brother, Rasool Caughman, left, in 2002.Creditvia Caughman/Peek family

Mr. Jackson told detectives, according to the official, that his intention was to keep on killing, the first attack being a springboard. At one point during his interrogation, he said he thought about grabbing a police officer’s gun and using it to shoot others.

Investigators have not yet determined the origins of this hate. Mr. Jackson told them that he had written his beliefs down and was going to deliver his writings to The New York Times. “He said, ‘Listen, I wrote this all down, it’s in my laptop,’” the law enforcement official said.

He apparently grew up in Baltimore. In 2007, he graduated from the Friends School of Baltimore, a small and prestigious Quaker day school.

Matt Micciche, the head of school, said the campus community was “shocked and saddened by the news of this horrific attack.”

“Our school — and the Religious Society of Friends — has a long history of commitment to diversity, racial equality, social justice and nonviolence,” Mr. Micciche said in a statement. “The entire Friends School community extends our deepest sympathy to the family and friends of Timothy Caughman.”

In March 2009, Mr. Jackson joined the Army and served at various locations in the United States, working in military intelligence. He was deployed to Afghanistan between December 2010 and November 2011. Afterward, he was stationed in Baumholder, Germany, before being discharged in August 2012, when his rank was specialist. During his service, the Army said, he received several awards.

It’s unclear what he did after leaving the Army, though he seemed lost. In the spring of 2015, he was nearly evicted from an apartment building in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood for falling behind on his rent, according to Marcus Dagan, who was filling in then as the building’s manager.

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Mr. Jackson joined the Army in 2009 and worked in military intelligence. He was deployed to Afghanistan and later stationed in Germany.

Speaking by phone from Omaha, where he now lives, Mr. Dagan said Mr. Jackson occupied a one-bedroom apartment and was at least six months in arrears.

Mr. Dagan described him as a “slob” and a “deadbeat,” who refused to let anyone inside his apartment and never engaged in the building’s social atmosphere. “He turned into the tenant from hell,” Mr. Dagan said.

He began eviction proceedings, but Mr. Jackson left before they were completed. The apartment, Mr. Dagan said, was the most disgusting thing the person hired to clean it had ever seen.

“He definitely had some issues of some kind,” Mr. Dagan said. “How do you describe it? He was off.”

Yet he said he had never heard Mr. Jackson say anything that could be construed as racist. “Never had an intimation of that,” he said. “When you shake hands with somebody you can guess the character,” he said. “In his case, you’d get like three fingers and a cold fish.”

Mr. Jackson’s most recent address was a three-story house wedged into a narrow street lined with rowhouses in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore, just west of Johns Hopkins University, a historic area that is filled with restaurants and shops.

No one answered the door at the home on Thursday. A patrol car from the Baltimore Police Department was posted outside.

Members of Mr. Jackson’s family appeared to be together in his parents’ home in a gated community several miles away. On Thursday afternoon, his family issued a brief statement through a lawyer: “Our family is shocked, horrified and heartbroken by this tragedy. We extend our prayers and condolences to the family of Timothy Caughman. We have no further comments at this time and ask that our privacy be respected.”

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A row of houses in the Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden, where Mr. Jackson lived. CreditAndrew Mangum for The New York Times

After Mr. Jackson got to New York last Friday, he checked into the Hotel at Times Square on West 46th Street, using an assumed name. As far as the police know, he attacked no one else during those first days. As best they can tell, he was hunting. His weapon was a sword, and he carried two smaller knives.

From surveillance cameras, investigators managed to track some of his movements, though there are gaps. In one video, he can be seen tailing a black man. When detectives questioned Mr. Jackson, they said he acknowledged zeroing in on that man but didn’t strike because there were too many people around.

Late Monday evening, he found a target on a Midtown street corner. Timothy Caughman was bent over some garbage.

Like many New Yorkers living spare lives in their retirement years, Mr. Caughman was once someone else, his identity not defined by empty pockets and a modest address.

He was born in Jamaica, Queens, and grew up in a comfortable apartment in the South Jamaica Houses. One of his cousins said the family has roots in Georgia dating back to the 1700s when their ancestors were first brought to America as slaves.

He was the son of Tula Caughman, a home health care aide for wealthy residents of nearby Jamaica Estates, and William Caughman, the pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church.

Growing up, he was called Hard Rock, for he knew his way around a boxing ring — and a street fight. “He was known in the community as not to be someone who started a fight, but if you started it, he finished it,” said one of his cousins.

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The sword the police said was used in the stabbing death of Timothy Caughman in Manhattan on Monday.CreditNew York Police Department

According to Seth Peek, another cousin, Mr. Caughman earned an associate degree after attending college in Brooklyn and Staten Island.

For several years in Queens, Mr. Caughman ran a division of the Neighborhood Youth Corps, a federal antipoverty program designed to provide part-time jobs to poor youths. “He probably gave out about two or three thousand jobs to people in the community,” said one of his cousins.

He also freely contributed homespun advice on how to excel: “‘If you know that someone is going to be somewhere, and you want to meet them, you got to be there an hour early,’” the cousin recalled Mr. Caughman instructing him.

Later, he held a succession of jobs, including as a concert promoter. He was particularly proud of booking an early gig by Earth Wind & Fire, before they attained fame, his cousin said.

For the last 20 years, he lived in a room at the Barbour Hotel on West 36th Street that now houses formerly homeless people transitioning to permanent housing.

Svein Jorgensen, the chief executive of Praxis Housing Initiatives, which manages the Barbour, said that of the 100-odd residents, Mr. Caughman was one of the few who were actually permanent tenants and not part of the transient program. In reports of the murder, Mr. Caughman was incorrectly assumed to be homeless.

“He was an extremely gracious individual and respectful of his neighbors,” Mr. Jorgensen said.

He read avidly, and mainly kept to himself. He was a recycler of redeemables, his currency for his modest wants. His relatives said he viewed this as an entrepreneurial undertaking, a way to keep active and help pay for his room.

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The South Jamaica Houses in Queens, where Mr. Caughman grew up.CreditJohn Taggart for The New York Times

He did maintain a social media presence. He had a Twitter account, and in his profile he defined himself as a can and bottle recycler, autograph collector and a good businessman. He said he aspired to visit California.

On his Twitter feed, sandwiched between posts about celebrity culture, are links to articles about preventing cholesterol in babies and others about autism, echoing his broad interests.

Among those aware of his fandom is Shari Headley, an actress who most recently played a district attorney on Tyler Perry’s “The Haves and the Have-nots” television soap opera. She held a live chat on Twitter every Tuesday, and she said Mr. Caughman rarely missed one. One day he requested a photo of her, and she mailed him an autographed photo.

“What kind of world are we living in right now?” she said, overcome with emotion. “What a harmless guy. He spends his days just wanting to take pictures with celebrities.”

When Ms. Headley’s character on “The Haves and the Have-nots” was killed off recently, she said Mr. Caughman was downcast, wishing it weren’t true. When her agent told her Mr. Caughman had been stabbed, she hoped the same thing.

Late Monday evening, as Mr. Caughman rooted through trash on Ninth Avenue, near his home, a white man in a dark coat approached him from behind. He said nothing. The man withdrew a sword from beneath his coat.

A woman heard commotion, but didn’t realize what was actually happening and she ran off. But she told detectives she heard Mr. Caughman say, “Why are you doing this? What are you doing?”

Correction:

An earlier version of this article gave the wrong name for Timothy Caughman’s father. He was William Caughman, not Russell Henry Caughman.

Correction:

An article on Friday about the murder of Timothy Caughman in Manhattan on March 20 misstated Mr. Caughman’s educational background. Mr. Caughman earned an associate degree after attending college in Brooklyn and on Staten Island, according to a cousin; he never attended Brooklyn College.